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Saudi Arabias Child-Rape Case: Female Activists Fight to Prevent Abuse
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Daily Beast/Newsweek
Posted: February 12th, 2013
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/08/saudi-arabi...
The torture and murder of 5-year-old Lama Al Ghamdi could hardly have been more horrific. But the fact that this story of one little girls death and one fathers monstrosity went public is also a sign of just how hard women in Saudi Arabia are working to fight the cruel misogyny embedded in the kingdoms version of Islamic law. Fayhan Al Ghamdi ... was arrested last year and charged with murder. He told authorities that he had suspected his 5-year old daughter was not a virgin. He had even taken her to a doctor to check. But apparently that had not satisfied him. He admitted hed used a cane and electrical cables on the child. Saudi law claims to follow a clear path (sharia) laid out in the Quran, but in practice its based on a maze of sayings and traditions (hadith) with as many baffling contradictions as the codes used by lawyers anywhere. According to one reading, a father cannot be held fully accountable for the death of his children; their loss is a punishment for him. So the question arose in the proceedings whether Al Ghamdi could simply pay the mother blood money for the loss of her daughter and walk free. The mother has said she will not accept payment. Before the middle of the last decade, domestic violence and child abuse in Saudi Arabia were treated mainly as family affairs. Nobody wanted to talk about them, and if police did bother to investigate suspected crimes, which was rare, they found proof very hard to come by.
Note: As a strong ally of the U.S., the monarchy of Saudi Arabia is very rarely criticized by politicians or the media for it's highly oppressive government and practices. For deeply revealing reports from reliable major media sources on child abuse, click here.
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